When given a choice of which squad mate to send to perform a task, is there a risk?
Solution 1:
No,
There are no suicide missions when choosing a squad mate to do a task. You should just pick the squad mate who you could get along without for a couple waves of foes.
Some squad mates complain they will suck at a particular task, in this case James, but I haven't noticed any difference in completion time between the choices.